Sunday, August 16, 2009

Culinary Therapy, Week 3

Okay, I am playing catch up here. Pictures of food I made will have to wait as I took pictures of them with a disposable camera and had to get them transferred to CD. I made lentil & sweet potato dal and a lot of salad.

Week 3 Assignments:

What motivates me to cook and take joy in it?

I think that cooking is the main way I try new things. It's less anxiety provoking for me to do things on my own terms in my own home (more on this later). I am also jazzed by the showing off and showing people I love them through food. Which is why the fact that I am not allowed to cook for members of my family is a frustration.

I am also weirdly excited by the frugality/making do angle. I made dal with the lentils I found cleaning out the pantry and paired it with a sweet potato that I needed to use up and it was great!

As for cleaning out my cooking tools and evaluating if they really work with what I cook, I currently cook with the contents of an Ikea kitchen box and an few additional tools. The majority of my tools are in Cookbook's garage, and I don't want to buy more until I have my hands on it all so I can sort through it. So I skip this task this week.

Finding a recipe...yeah, that's a fail. I can't seem to find a recipe that looks good that also isn't something I am completely comfortable with and that is also affordable.I have good skills on the cooking thing. I like to stretch myself.

It also occurs to be that I should start to plan out the things I might choose to make over the course of this experiment based on Wende's themes. Hmmm. I am actually great with my cooking skills and things I like to cook, but I think I am going to try to make the following: pineapple upside down cake (I ask permission to cheat and use butter cake mix for this--I don't have a mixer with me but I do back in Ohio (of course!) and I know I can make this cake without one if I use a mix for the cake only), Lady Baltimore cake (after I have my mixer), tzatziki, and artichokes. Any other suggestions? I am game for almost anything.

1 comment:

drwende said...

It is not cheating to prepare a cake using methods appropriate to the equipment you have on hand. Cheating is buttering Chips Ahoy and heating them in the oven in order to serve them as fresh cookies (which Mrs. Neighbor has done).